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There are two kinds of countries on earth: Those that use the metric system. Those that landed a man on the Moon.
by rainbowzootsuit 3y ago
There are two kinds of countries on earth:
Those that use the metric system.
Those that landed a man on the Moon.
- defrost 3y agoThe country that landed men on the moon adopted the metric systems as the basis of its measures before most other countries and programmed its moon landing systems using metric. The country is a metric country (see: Official definition of the US foot). Its citizens, however, largely still roll coal measured by chains to the hogshead.
- rainbowzootsuit 3y agoThe previous moon thing is a joke and at least partially an explanation for "freedom units," which is a joking (I think) commentary about the citizenry's beliefs about "their freedoms," and somehow these freedoms translates to freedom from using the metric system when they roll coal along a couple furlongs of interstate (in a truck that contains only metric fasteners.)
- Smoosh 3y agoLiberia landed a man on the moon?
- guappa 3y agoCan you list a country that landed men on the moon who didn't have to hire German scientists to achieve that?
- littlestymaar 3y agoYet the governmental agency responsible for the moon landing acknowledged that metric is a better system and adopted it…
- detourdog 3y agoMy problem with the metric scale is that when values are expressed in scientific notion they lose all reference to me. I try to learn but the only thing I think I have retained is that if the number has a negative 6 its most likely a small number.
- vidarh 3y agoSo don't express them in scientific notation. That is entirely orthogonal to using SI units.
- detourdog 3y agoWhat if I'm trying to read them when they are written in Scientific notation. What should I do?
- vidarh 3y agoHow would you handle that if written in scientific notation with other units? It's still entirely a separate issue to the units used.
- detourdog 3y agoI don't know what to say other than I have a hard time reading scientific notation and the metric system. The metric system seems to lend itself to large numbers that are small quantities on the human scale.
- vidarh 3y agoYou wrote: > My problem with the metric scale is that when values are expressed in scientific notion they lose all reference to me. As if the two are connected. But my point is that scientific notation is not part of the metric system at all. If you problem is with scientific notation, that is a problem with scientific notation, not metric. If anything, with metric units most people outside of the sciences will use the metric prefixes and never ever use scientific notation at all.